


Three-cornered romance

by melodiousb



Category: An Old Fashioned Girl - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 03:36:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13045674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodiousb/pseuds/melodiousb
Summary: Lovers won't come between these friends.





	Three-cornered romance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onedogtown](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onedogtown/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! 
> 
> Thank you for prompting this. I feel like I've been waiting half my life for a reason to think about what's going on with these three, and this is just one of many satisfying possibilities.

Bess usually stops by Becky’s studio in the evening, to walk home with her, and to make sure she doesn’t work too late. Becky has a habit of getting caught up in work and forgetting the time. But it’s too dark to work now, and Becky’s stomach is growling, and she’s forced to conclude that Bess isn’t coming.

Sure enough, when she reaches the room they share, Bess is there, curled up on the bed with a magazine. Becky takes off her coat and shoes and rummages in the cabinet for something to eat. 

“I don’t mind your not coming to walk with me,” Becky says. “Only, I thought you would, so I waited.”

Bess looks up, contrite. “I forgot,” she says.

“It’s alright,” says Becky. She waits a moment, then adds, “You don’t forget often.”

Bess puts down her magazine and folds her hands in her lap. “Mr. Wingfield asked me to marry him.”

“Oh,” says Becky. She waits for Bess to say more, but she doesn’t, so Becky asks, “What did you say?”

Bess gives her an odd look. “I said no, of course. I said I liked him very much as a friend, but that I’d never expected or wanted anything other than friendship from him. Why? Did you think I was going to give you up for the first man who asked me to marry him?”

“Not the first one, no,” says Becky, avoiding Bess’s gaze. “But—Mr. Wingfield is very nice. And you do like him a great deal.”

“George is lovely,” says Bess. “And I do like him. But I love you.”

Becky puts down her apple and sits next to Bess on the bed, and puts an arm around her shoulders. Bess twists around and pulls Becky down to kiss her. 

“He’s the nicest man I know,” says Bess. “But he’s not you.”

“Didn’t you know that he wanted to marry you, though, really?” Becky asks. That’s the part she finds hardest to believe.

Bess shakes her head. “How could I? He’s always acted like a friend, and only a friend.”

“I knew,” says Becky. “I think you must be the only one who didn’t.”

“How?”

Becky shrugs. “He invited both of us to things, but only so he could talk to you. He looked at you like—like he wanted to keep looking.” She smiles. “I know what loving you looks like.”

Bess takes a moment to absorb that, and then says, “I’m sorry. I suppose I should have known.”

“Don’t apologize, you goose,” says Becky, slipping her arm around Bess’s waist. “You haven’t done anything wrong. And—I think I like that you didn’t know.”

Bess smiles. “I think only of you,” she says, jokingly solemn.

Becky has liked George Wingfield, up until now. Liked him in spite of herself, because she had seen that he cared fro Lizzie the first time they met. She can’t really blame him for falling in love with Lizzie, or for asking her to marry him—she finds that much easier to understand than all the young men who inexplicably haven’t. But she finds herself beginning to dislike him afterwards, when he disappears from their lives, and when she sees how much Bess misses him.

 

She runs into him by chance one afternoon, walking home. She returns his greeting coldly, and passes on. A few minutes later, he falls into step beside her.

“Forgive me, Miss Jeffrey,” he says. “I started to walk on, but you looked at me so unkindly that I had to know the reason. Have I done anything to offend you?”

Becky rarely minces her words. “Miss Small valued your friendship greatly,” she says. “She did not realize that refusing to become your wife meant you would withdraw it completely.”

George whistles softly. “Does she really feel like that?”

“Well, she hasn’t said so,” says Becky. “But yes, she does.”

“Then I owe her an apology, I suppose,” says George. “But I had assumed she would understand.”

“Understand what?”

“That I needed some time to lick my wounds.” He smiles wryly. “I was pretty hard hit, you know.”

“I do know,” says Becky, slowly. “But I’m not sure that Bess does. She thinks very much in the abstract, you know.”

“Which is why you and I, as realists, like her so much,” says George, smiling sideways at her. They’re very nearly the same height, and their eyes are level. Becky isn’t at all sure that she is a realist, but she takes it as the compliment he intends, and likes it.

 

It turns out that George’s office is very close to the studio Becky is sharing with a couple of her classmates this year. They meet often, at first by accident, and then on purpose, going for short walks at lunchtime whenever the weather is good. He asks her if she’s mentioned their walks to Bess, and she understands and dislikes the implication. “Of course I have,” she says.

 

Bess doesn’t understand it. “You seem to like him more now that you did before.”

“I do,” says Becky. “I think—I know him better than I did. He only cared to talk to you before.”

Bess smiles. “Perhaps he will be proposing to you before long.”

Becky laughs. “I don’t think it will come to that,” she says.

“I don’t see why not,” says Bess.

Becky smiles at her. “You sound almost offended by the idea.”

“I almost am,” says Bess. “Why should he not fall in love with you?”

“You seem to have a very poor idea of his constancy,” says Becky. “But I can assure you that he is still very much in love with you.”

“Well,” says Bess, “I think he’s demonstrating very poor taste.”

 

After some months, George apparently feels able to face Bess again. They find out when George’s sister calls on them, and begins inviting them to her house again. Becky expects things to be the same as they were, but, while George and Bess’s friendship seems to pick up where it left off, he no longer monopolizes her. Now he makes time for Becky as well. But Becky gets the feeling that she doesn’t really understand Bess’s friendship with George, and that Bess doesn’t understand hers. And she’s quite sure that George doesn’t understand her relationship with Bess.

She’s wrong about that, though. She and George are seated side by side in his sister’s drawing room one afternoon, watching Bess help Florence pour out the tea. It’s the kind of thing Bess would be called upon to do if she had become engaged to George. She would have done well as his fiancee, and as his wife. Bess has a knack for making people feel welcome while giving very little of herself away.

“What does your sister know of what happened between you and Bess?”

“I told her when Bess refused me,” says George.

“And then?”

“And then I asked her why she’d stopped inviting the two of you here, and pretended I’d never wanted her to,” he says, with a suppressed smile.

Becky smiles back. It’s odd how likable she finds him. He’s so different from her, and so different from Bess, and she’d always thought she and Bess were opposites.

“She looks as if she still regards Bess as…a prospective sister,” Becky observes.

“Yes,” says George. “She probably does.”

“Why is that?” Becky asks. It comes out a little bit sharply.

“Because,” George says, with a direct and almost uncomfortable gaze, “I’ve told here I still have some hope.”

“And why would you do that?”

“Because I do. Becky, don’t leave.” He takes her hand to keep her in her seat, but lets go before she can protest. “Listen to me.”

She sits there with her hands curled tightly in her lap, and waits for him to continue. When he doesn’t say anything, she looks across at Bess again. She’s chatting with another student, obviously enjoying herself. Becky won’t interrupt.

She looks back at George, and finds that he’s watching her. “I don’t want to take her away from you,” he says.

“Yes, you do.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t even want her—without you,” he says, very quietly.

She looks at him for a long time. 

“I think I could make you both very happy, if she married me,” he says.

Terrifyingly, she thinks he might be right.


End file.
